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Mikkel Vang
- Yield
- Makes 10 first-course servings
- Active Time
- 1 1/4 hr
- Total Time
- 2 hr (includes making fish stock)
- 1 (1-lb) can whole tomatoes in juice
- 5 cups white fish stock
- 1 1/4 lb medium shrimp in shell (31 to 35 per lb), peeled, reserving shells
- 2 1/4 teaspoons salt
- 2 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
- 1 cup finely chopped onion (1 medium)
- 3/4 cup finely chopped green bell pepper (1/2 medium)
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 2 1/4 cups water
- 1/4 teaspoon cayenne, or to taste
- 2/3 cup long-grain white rice
- 1 1/2 cups thinly sliced scallion greens (from 2 bunches)
- Drain tomatoes, reserving juice, and finely chop. Bring stock and shrimp shells to a boil in a 3-quart saucepan, then simmer, partially covered, 15 minutes. Pour stock through a sieve into a bowl, discarding shells. (Stock will appear cloudy.) Devein shrimp, then halve lengthwise and toss with 1/2 teaspoon salt in a bowl. Chill shrimp, covered, until ready to use.
- Melt butter in a 6- to 7-quart heavy pot over moderately low heat, then add flour and cook roux, stirring constantly, until the color of peanut butter, 10 to 15 minutes. Add onion, bell pepper, and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until bell pepper is softened, 3 to 5 minutes. Stir in tomatoes with juice, stock, 1 cup water, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, and cayenne and bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Reduce heat and simmer court bouillon, partially covered, 30 minutes.
- While courtbouillon simmers, bring remaining 1 1/4 cups water to a boil in a 1- to 1 1/2-quart heavy saucepan. Add rice and remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt and return to a boil. Cover pan, then reduce heat to low and cook until water is absorbed and rice is tender, about 15 minutes. Let stand, covered, 5 minutes, then fluff with a fork.
- Add shrimp to courtbouillon and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until shrimp are just cooked through, about 2 minutes. Stir in scallion greens.
- Divide rice among soup plates, then ladle in courtbouillon with shrimp.
Cooks' notes:


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STANFORD, Calif. (AP) Kevin Hogan hustled off the practice field Tuesday morning, changed out of his sweaty Stanford football jersey and headed across campus for his most important meeting: a Spanish test.
Forgive the Cardinal quarterback if he's short on words - or mixing up his languages.
For the third straight season on The Farm, the year's biggest exams fall on the same week. Not only are the eighth-ranked Cardinal (11-2) finishing finals in the classroom, the Pac-12 champions are beginning preparations for the Jan. 1 Rose Bowl against Big Ten winner Wisconsin (8-5).
``We're used to it by now,'' Hogan said. ``We've been through this already.''
After playing in the Orange Bowl and Fiesta Bowl the past two seasons, the experience still doesn't make the work any easier on or off the field at the rigorous academics university.
Players had last week off during a ``dead week'' of school, when students don't have class but hunker down for exams. Hogan, a redshirt freshman who has yet to declare his major, has another final Friday in Earth Systems before he can fully invest his time in football.
Same goes for most of his teammates.
Hogan still gathered his wide receivers and tight ends during the off week to run routes and stay in game shape. Others have been recovering from the bumps and bruises of the season since beating UCLA 27-24 in the league title game on Nov. 30.
``I think it's just balancing, finding the right combination of being prepared but not overthinking everything,'' linebacker Shayne Skov said. ``I think with any sort of important moment in your life you want to be thorough, you want to be ready, but you also don't want to overdo things and put any undue stress on yourself.''
Stanford coach David Shaw and his staff hit the recruiting trail from coast to coast while also beginning to game plan for the Badgers.
Wisconsin added a wrinkle to that preparation when Bret Bielema surprisingly left to become the new Arkansas coach. Badgers athletic director Barry Alvarez, the coach from 1990 through 2005, will return to the sidelines for the Rose Bowl before he hires a replacement.
Shaw said that changed ``nothing'' other than the hand he will shake following the game.
``We have to compartmentalize,'' Shaw said. ``They're a prideful group. As long as Montee Ball is back there at running back, I expect to see the same Wisconsin team.''
NOTES: Shaw huddled players after practice to recognize David Yankey for winning the Morris Trophy, given annually to the Pac-12's most outstanding offensive and defensive linemen. Arizona State DT Will Sutton won on the defensive side. Yankey shuffled from left tackle to his more natural guard position to anchor a young offensive line this season. The junior will return for his senior season and is expected to be a high pick in the 2014 NFL draft. ``I haven't seen everybody. But from what I've seen, he might be the best guard in the country right now,'' Shaw said. ``We hope he can just play guard next season.'' ... Zach Ertz said he was disappointed that he didn't win the Mackey Award, given to the nation's top tight end. He also said former Stanford TE Coby Fleener, who was snubbed last year before being drafted 34th overall by the Indianapolis Colts, reached out to him following the announcement. Notre Dame's Tyler Eifer took home the award. Eifer had 44 receptions for 624 yards and four touchdowns. Ertz had 66 catches for 837 yards and six touchdowns, including the winning score against then-No. 2 Southern California and the tying touchdown to force overtime in a win at top-ranked Oregon. ... Stanford will leave for Pasadena on Dec. 26.
Antonio Gonzalez can be reached at: www.twitter.com/agonzalezAP

subset: commoncrawl


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Sharing their music vibes to open opportunities (SMH)
16 July 2012
They're the kind of jam sessions that could open up new worlds of opportunity for school students. As part of a pilot program set to continue next year, future music teachers studying at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music visited schools in less-advantaged areas, improvising with students during weekly music workshops and encouraging them to consider different pathways to further study.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/sharing-their-music-vibes-to-open-opportunities-20120715-223zc.html
Contact: Steven Burns
Phone: 02 9351 1214


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Evolution Hoax
Matthew, 24 (1-13)
Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. "Do you see all these things?" he asked. "I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down."
As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. "Tell us," they said, "when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?"
Jesus answered: "Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Messiah,' and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.
AT THAT TIME MANY will turn away from the faith and will...HATE EACH OTHER...Because of the increase of wickedness, THE LOVE OF MOST WILL GROW COLD, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.
Doomsday will not take place... UNTIL GREETINGS ARE EXTENDED ONLY TO ACQUAINTANCES NOT TO PEOPLE IN GENERAL, . (Death-Doomsday-The Hereafter and the Portents of the End Times, Imam Sharani - Al-Qurtubi, Bedir Publishing, Istanbul 1981 p. 461; no. 845)


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Posts Tagged splitting
From sketch to model
Posted by mvbarracuda in Misc on April 27th, 2009
Heya and welcome to yet another PARPG news update! As promised: now delivered weekly again.
An important advantage of weekly blog updates is that the number of topics to cover can be usually kept rather low. This time we'll take a look into the latest map tests and present Zenbitz's thoughts how combat could work in PARPG. Last but not least we'll show you how a piece of concept art evolves from a mere black and white sketch to a colorized version of it and finally into an actual (work in progress) 3d model.
Map code tests
Maximinus has continued to play around with the map code of the game and tried to find out if there are sane alternatives to splitting up larger objects – e.g. buildings – into smaller separate tile-wide pieces. So far it looks like splitting objects is the way to go as it's hard to work around z-ordering and collision (blocking) issues otherwhise. If you're interested in the details: check out the thread at the forums. Maximinus does also plan to update the forums with new pictures of his latest tests on a somewhat regular basis. A thread has been opened for this purpose.
Try yourself
As building FIFE and running PARPG is usually quite easy (depending on the distribution that you use in case of Linux), some users might simply want to check out the latest changes themselves instead of just staring at screenshot. As we've changed the path of the game folder in SVN lately, the old guide at the wiki was not up to date anymore. So in case you tried to check out PARPG from SVN in the last days and it didn't work for you, take a look into the now updated download article at the wiki.
Combat considerations
Zenbitz spent his week on thinking how the combat system in PARPG could work. He collected a whole couple of possible options and wrote them down at the wiki. Feel free to check out the combat article there.
From sketch to actual 3d model
As pictures often speak more than 1000 words, we've got some visuals for you again. Concept artist JustinOperable (yes, it's a pun) started to create a bunch of black and white character concept drawings for the project. The next step was to colorize these drawings so they could be used as inspiration for an actual ingame model. Graphics artist Sirren was the one who started to work on an actual 3d representation of such a female ingame character.
Most important: the model is still heavy work in progress; so please keep that in mind! We know that it will still need quite some work but as we try our best to keep all progress transparent, we decided to rather post a work in progress version instead of hiding it from as long as no final version of it is availble. All kind of feedback is appreciated 🙂
Black and white sketch:
Colorized version:
Work in progress 3d model:
That's all for today. See you again next week!


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I like to PUG heroic scenarios for some fast valor points and found that most of them aren't really a problem, including the bonus objectives.
However, the Blood in the Snow scenario seems to be a different kind of beast: I got the bonus objective once or twice with two other 525+ guildmates (3 DDs with some decent off heals), but with a PUG the bonus objective seems virtually impossible.
Also, the unavoidable random group damage from dots and other stuff is quite high, which makes this scenario a PITA without a dedicated healer (=higher chance of survivial, but even lower chance of getting the bonus objective).
So... do you have any tips for PUGing this scenario?
(I like to use the extra action button to destroy the war banners quickly before engaging a new group)


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Reports that audiences were afraid to see The Dark Knight Rises on the weekend after the Aurora tragedy turned out to be not so true. Yes, the film had a steeper than usual drop on Friday but then rebounded nicely; taking first place with an estimated $64 million. It must have been the week's two new releases that people were 'hesitant' to see. Neither The Watch nor Step Up Revolution made it out of the low teens on their opening frame.
|The Dark Knight Rises
|Ice Age 4
|The Watch
|Step Up Revolution
|The Amazing Spider-Man
|Magic Mike
|Madea's Witness Protection
Because most outlets decided not to report box office results last weekend, we'll start by getting caught up with The Dark Knight Rises. To be clear, it still feels uncomfortable to talk about ticket sales in light of the lives lost on July 20th. Next to that tragedy everything else is completely inconsequential. But, because inconsequential facts are the hallmark of every box office report I have ever read or written, here we go:
The Dark Knight Rises ended up in first place last weekend with $160.8 million, a figure that narrowly topped the $158.4 million of 2008's The Dark Knight. Though not close to the $200 million many were betting on, that amount did translate to the third-best domestic opening of all time, behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and The Avengers. Unlike both of the latter, however, The Dark Knight Rises had no 3D ticket advantage, giving it the all-time highest debut for an old-fashioned two dimensional release.
After ten days TDKR has collected $289 million in the US and almost $500 worldwide. Yesterday it rebounded from that steep 76% Friday drop to secure an estimated $64 million for its second domestic weekend. Once again, that is down from the $75.1 million that The Dark Knight earned on its sophomore frame but, considering that projections originally had the film as low as $55 million, I wouldn't get too hung up comparing the two.
The truth is, though it is natural to try to analyze the returns of The Dark Knight Rises in terms of past hits – The Avengers and The Dark Knight especially – there is really no comparison that will ever fit. The shooting in Colorado is something unique and horrible; an event no forecast model is equipped to deal with. With more time, it may get easier to talk about TDKR as we would any other film but that time is still a long way off.
Overall, the box office was down more than 20% over this same weekend in 2011, though not for the reasons you might imagine. One year ago the top film was Cowboys and Aliens with $36.4 million, closely followed by The Smurfs with $35.6 million. The combined total of those two debuts was just a bit higher than this week's TDKR estimate, making the shrunken numbers for the rest of this weekend's top ten the real problem.
Heading that list of disappointments is Fox's The Watch. You may remember that the R-rated comedy was once called Neighborhood Watch until a certain 'neighborhood watchman' in Florida shot and killed an unarmed teenager. That change of title didn't do much good, however. Despite the film's all-star cast, The Watch could not reach the $20 million debut that many expected, ending up with an estimate of just $13 million from its 3,168 locations.
The debut of Step Up Revolution was even lower than that of The Watch; though also much more excusable. The fourth installment in Summit Entertainment's teen-dance series was never expected to do big business. In August 2010 Step Up 3D was a surprise hit, grossing almost $160 million worldwide without the series' star Channing Tatum. But even in that case, the film's opening weekend was just $15.8 million. Surprisingly, the budget for Step Up Revolution is a bit higher than for Step Up 3D so it will most likely fall to international audiences to determine the future of the Step Up franchise.
I would like to believe that next weekend will see movie attendance return to 2011 numbers but I'm not sure that can happen. One year ago we had the debut of Rise of the Planet of the Apes with $54.8 million. Can the reboot of Total Recall generate that level of interest? You tell me.


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This is not an offer for credit and should be used for estimation purposes only based on the information you provided. You should not base your decision on this estimate alone. Title, registration, tax and other fees, and personal circumstances such as employment status and personal credit history, were not considered in the calculations.
Front - Dual drum
Rear - Drum
Front - AT18 x 7-8
Rear - AT18 x 9-8
Front - Single A-arm; 5 in. travel
Rear - Monoshock swingarm; 5.8 in. travel
Team Yamaha Blue / White


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Romney issues over-the-top attack on embassy attacks… And his statement looks worse and worse as new information comes out, including the death of the U.S. ambassador to Libya… Romney camp stands by its attack saying embassy statement came after the u nrest began… More tensions between Obama and Netanyahu… Focusing on Florida… Obama camp goes on the air in Wisconsin… Team Romney again outspending Team Obama on the airwaves this week… And this week's 10 hottest TV markets.
A day that started with a campaign pause for solemn remembrances of 9/11 ended with violence abroad and mudslinging here in America. The Daily Rundown's Chuck Todd reports.
*** Over the top : Yesterday we noted that Mitt Romney, down in the polls after the convention, was throwing the kitchen sink at President Obama. Little did we know the kitchen sink would include -- on the anniversary of 9/11 -- one of the most over-the-top and (it turns out) incorrect attacks of the general-election campaign . Last night after 10:00 pm ET, Romney released a statement on the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Egypt and Libya. After saying he was "outraged" by these attacks and the death of an American consulate worker, Romney said, "It's disgraceful that the Obama administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks." Yet after learning every piece of new information about those attacks, the Romney statement looks worse and worse -- and simply off-key. First, Romney was referring to a statement that the U.S. embassy in Egypt issued condemning the "efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims." But that embassy statement, which the White House has distanced itself from, was in reference to an anti-Islam movie and anti-Islam pastor Terry Jones, and it came out BEFORE the embassy attacks began. Then this morning, we learned that the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and others died in one of the attacks.
David Calvert / Getty Images
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney addresses the crowd at the 134th National Guard Association Convention at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center, September 11, 2012 in Reno, Nevada.
*** When news-cycle campaigning goes awry: Bottom line: This was news-cycle campaigning by the Romney campaign gone awry. Why didn't the Romney campaign wait until it had all the facts? On his overseas trip in the summer, Romney was so careful not to criticize Obama while on foreign soil. But how much time do you give an administration to work through a diplomatic and international crisis before trying to score immediate political points? You'd expect the Sarah Palins of the world to quickly pounce on something like this, and she predictably did. But a presidential nominee running for the highest office in the land? After the facts have come out, last night's Romney statement only feeds the narrative that his campaign is desperate. And given that the Romney camp has already moved on to other subjects this morning -- issuing a press release on debt and not the embassy attacks -- it appears the campaign realizes it, too. Right before our publication time, the Romney camp responds to us that it stands by its statement from last night. The controversial embassy statement, the Romney camp argues, had occurred AFTER the unrest in Egypt and Libya had already begun (citing this CBS report) and that the statement had served as the administration's sole response until about 10:00 pm ET.
*** More tensions between Obama and Netanyahu: In another sign that foreign affairs and national security have jumped to the top of the issues in the past day, there's renewed tension between Israel PM Netanyahu and the Obama White House over Iran. The New York Times: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel inserted himself into the most contentious foreign policy issue of the American presidential campaign on Tuesday, criticizing the Obama administration for refusing to set clear 'red lines' on Iran's nuclear progress that would prompt the United States to undertake a military strike." Then came a dispute over whether or not Obama was snubbing Netanyahu by not meeting with him when he comes to the U.S. later this month. In the evening, the White House released a statement saying that Obama and Netanyahu had talked by phone for an hour and adding: "Contrary to reports in the press, there was never a request for Prime Minister Netanyahu to meet with President Obama in Washington, nor was a request for a meeting ever denied." The Israelis have another version of this phone call and still believe they have been snubbed by not getting that invite. By the way, don't think Israeli political leaders are united on this. Check out the headline over lead story in the Jerusalem Post: "Mofaz to PM: Are you trying to oust Obama or Ahmadinejad?
*** Focusing on Florida: Today, most of the campaign activity is in Florida, with Romney holding an event in Jacksonville at 9:30 am ET and with Bill Clinton stumping in Orlando at 6:30 pm (after stopping in Miami yesterday). Here is where things stand in Florida right now: It is a must-win state for Romney, and it's a luxury for Obama -- which could be a knockout blow in this contest if he wins it. Why? According to our battleground map, if Obama wins Florida and just one other toss-up state -- but loses every other one -- he hits or surpasses 270 electoral votes. In other campaign news today, Obama holds an event in Las Vegas at 8:25 pm ET (and conducts an interview with Telemundo).
*** Obama camp goes on the air in Wisconsin: But this map news has to make the Romney campaign smile: The Obama camp is now advertising in Wisconsin, purchasing $670,000 of airtime in the state from Sept 13-19 to match (and exceed) the Romney advertising there. While we've had Wisconsin as "toss up" on our battleground map for months, we've told you that we'd know if the state were TRULY competitive if both sides were advertising there. Well, now we know… Speaking of TV ads, the Obama camp has this new one that revives its charge that Romney's tax plan would end up raising taxes on the middle class. And the Romney camp has a new Spanish-language one hitting Obama on Medicare.
*** Team Romney again outspending Team Obama: This week – from Sept. 10-16 –Team Romney (the campaign and outside groups) is outspending Team Obama (campaign and outside groups), $10.7 million to $9.4 million. Here's the breakdown: Obama camp $7 million, Romney camp $6.9 million, American Crossroads $2.7 million, Priorities USA $2.1 million, Americans for Prosperity $1 million, and SEIU/Priorities $240K. Note: These numbers are a bit smaller than in past weeks because the campaigns pulled down their ads on Sept. 11.
*** This week's 10 hottest TV markets:
1. Columbus, OH (Romney 1200, Obama 800, Priorities 500, American Crossroads 250)
2. Des Moines, IA (Romney 1100, Obama 1000, American Crossroads 270, Priorities 245)
3. Richmond, VA (Obama 1100, Romney 1100, American Crossroads 220, Priorities 180)
4. Norfolk, VA (Obama 1200, Romney 1000, American Crossroads 200, Priorities 100)
5. Cleveland, OH (Obama 1200, Romney 780, Priorities 270, American Crossroads 180)
6. Raleigh, NC (Romney 1200, Obama 880, American Crossroads 365)
7. Tampa, FL (Romney 1000, Obama 880, American Crossroads 250, Priorities 230)
8. Toledo, OH (Obama 1000, Romney 815, American Crossroads 340, Priorities 240)
9. Reno, NV (Romney 980, Obama 845, American Crossroads 545)
10. Las Vegas (Obama 1000, Romney 800, American Crossroads 500)
Countdown to 1st presidential debate: 21 days
Countdown to VP debate: 29 days
Countdown to 2nd presidential debate: 34 days
Countdown to 3rd presidential debate: 40 days
Countdown to Election Day: 55 days
Click here to sign up for First Read emails.
Text FIRST to 622639, to sign up for First Read alerts to your mobile phone.
Check us out on Facebook and also on Twitter. Follow us @chucktodd, @mmurraypolitics, @DomenicoNBC, @brookebrower


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Hello all Quantum owners,
I am sure as well as many of you, I received last week a letter from P&M Aviation about some upgrades which are available for the Quantum range of Aircraft. In total there are 5 upgrades available under Mod 324, some of which are Major Mods done at the factory and whereby your aircraft will be test flown following the work. There are also a couple of Minor Mods, spats and fairings for uprights and Kingpost. The result is an increase of speed to 70 mph.
Well done to P&M Aviation. I think it is an excellent idea. There are many Quantums out there and the upgrades are I believe well priced. For around £2,500 to £3,000 a Quantum could be completely upgraded including a wing inspection at the factory.
I was considering holding onto my Quantum 503 for another 2-3 years with the aim of hopefully upgrading to a Quik 912 or a GT450. However now with the possibility of this upgrade, I think I could have a similar speed range from my Quantum following the upgrades. Plus I might consider buying a second hand 912 to nail onto the back whilst I am at it. It is certainly some food for thought. Not something I can do right now, but a plan for the future.
I wish P&M Aviation every success with this plan and I hope fellow Quantum owners make the investment and get their much loved Quantums upgraded to the Quantum Leap. Would be a very nice article for the BMAA Magazine. Looking forward to hearing more.
What do you think? Is it something you would consider?


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Toni Braxton Disses Terrence J Of 106 & Park When Clearing Up Dating Rumors!? "He Doesn't Have No Money. Sorry"
skip to 5 Min: 43 sec. On Wendy Williams
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Courtesy of CNN
Something about the Facebook privacy hoax has gotten people to click "share."
First, the faux copyright legalese spread like wildfire across the social networking site. Many users recently found their news feeds awash with postings suggesting that the users who displayed them would get extra copyright and privacy protection.
Then came the predictable backlash, as Internet users rushed in to debunk this latest theory. Even still, some people kept posting the message and it continued to spread on Tuesday morning.
Facebook has issued a statement saying the text posts are a hoax: "Anyone who uses Facebook owns and controls the content and information they post, as stated in our terms. They control how that content and information is shared. That is our policy, and it always has been."
This meme is similar to a previous scheme years ago that suggested website owners place protective text on their pages, says the hoax-debunking site Snopes.com.
While many Facebook and Twitter posts snickered about the hubbub, concerns about online privacy linger.
"It may have been a hoax, but it did not hurt!" wrote one Facebook user.
There are questions, too. In a world of social media dominated by complex terms of use and sometimes-fuzzy privacy arrangements, could some Facebook users have taken solace in the possibility of having some bit of extra control over their data, even if it was a hoax?
Or, is this an issue of social media literacy? Perhaps more needs to be done to educate people about telling a hoax from something that is real.
We'd like to know what you think about the hoax. What does this say about our online world? Do you feel that your information is safe? What can be done to improve online privacy?


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via Instagram http://bit.ly/1Y0jcsI
We are ThatCrazyFamily who posts family friendly videos for all ages on YouTube and DailyMotion. You'll see fun toy reviews and openings, funny toy skits, hilarious songs, Shout Out shows, all with a CRAZY twist of humor. We often feature Angry Birds, Angry Birds Transformers, Angry Birds Star Wars 2, Rabbids Invasion, How to Train Your Dragon, Minions, LEGOs, Play Doh, Minecraft Toys, Toy Story, Thomas the Tank Engine.
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Tooooo Crazy!! #thatcrazyfamily #youtuber
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ALLEN PARK — Reggie Bush needs just 60 rushing yards in the next two games to hit the 1,000-yard rushing mark.
"I think it's tough to run the ball in this league and to be able to gain a 1,000 yards I think it is. (a benchmark)," the Lions running back said.
It would be just the second time in his eight NFL seasons that he would reach that milestone.
In 2011, his first year with the Miami Dolphins, he rushed for 1,086 yards. He came up 14 yards short in 2012 in Miami.
"Hopefully I can break that and that would be nice to add to the resume,'' said Bush who has 1,403 all-purpose yards in 12 games this season.
He is averaging 4.8 yards per carry which is third best in his career. He surpassed the 5,000-yard career rushing mark on Thanksgiving.
Pettigrew on crutches
Brandon Pettigrew was one of six players missing from Wednesday's walk-through. He injured his left ankle on Monday night and couldn't finish the game. He was on crutches in the locker room on Wednesday and didn't speak to reporters.
"We'll just see where he gets to over the course of the week,'' Schwartz said. "We'll have plans if he can play. We'll have plays if he can't."
Pettigrew is a solid all-around tight end. Rookie Joe Fauria is working to improve his blocking skills and the other tight end, Dorin Dickerson, sees himself as a full-service tight end but has limited experience over three seasons.
Fauria caught a 14-yard touchdown pass on Monday night. It was his 12th catch and seventh touchdown.
Two points shy
If the Lions had converted for two points after the late fourth-quarter touchdown pass to Fauria, the Ravens would have just tied the game with that 61-yard field goal.
It was a huge miss when Matthew Stafford couldn't connect with Calvin Johnson.
"It's a play we run every week in practice, coach always talks about how this could be the week when this play is up and we didn't convert,'' Reggie Bush said. "
Ins and outs
Chris Houston, who missed two of the last three games, was back on the practice field Wednesday on a limited basis. He missed Monday night's game with a turf toe injury.
Because the Lions played on Monday night, it wasn't a practice it was a walk-through.
Besides Pettigrew, others missing from the walk-through including Calvin Johnson, who was on the field with the wide receivers but not working; DeAndre Levy (foot), who was on the field watching; Darius Slay (knee) who stretched and was running along the sidelines with a trainer; John Wendling who was wearing an orthopedic boot on his left foot; and Louis Delmas (knee) who doesn't practice on Wednesdays.
(Follow @PaulaPasche on Twitter.com and Tout.com. Read her Lions Lowdown blog at oplions.blogspot.com. Join her weekly live chat at 3 p.m. Thursdays at TheOaklandPress.com.)


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Tuesday, September 29, 2020
Capitulating to Israeli pressure, FIFA continues to delay decision on settlement clubs
Ayesha Khan
- May 16, 2017
Main News
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The international football body FIFA decided last week to once again postpone a decision on the future of six Israeli settlement teams at its congress meeting in the Bahraini capital Manama. The congress voted 138-50 in favour of the issue being postponed until October.
The Palestine Football Association (PFA) submitted a letter on May 15, 2015 requesting to have FIFA stop all Israeli football activity in occupied territory. Palestinians wanted FIFA to suspend the Israeli Football Association if it failed to relocate six teams based in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. A monitoring committee was set up, headed by anti-apartheid South African minister Tokyo Sexwale.
Palestinian sports clubs, human rights organizations, and secretary-general of PLO's Youth and Sports Department, Husam Arafat (along with 66 members of the European Parliament) have come forward in support for the Palestinian bid.
Palestinians have argued that settlement teams violate the FIFA Statutes that prohibit team members from playing without consent from the team whose grounds the game is taking place at. Settlements are considered illegal under international law, as reiterated in a UN Security Council resolution passed last December. Allowing settlement football teams to continue playing, Palestinians have argued, makes FIFA complicit in violating international law.
Enough of the stonewalling," said Human Rights Watch in a statement. "Continuing to sponsor games on stolen land flouts the human rights commitments FIFA so recently
Israel argues that settlements are not illegal since they are in "disputed" territory where there is no official Palestinian border.
To fulfill its human rights responsibilities, FIFA should require its affiliate, the
Israel Football Association
, which is conducting business in unlawful settlements that are off-limits to Palestinians, to move all FIFA-sanctioned games and activities inside Israel," stated Human Rights Watch in a
last year, which pointed out that the issue is not a mere dispute between the Israeli and Palestinian football associations, but that FIFA itself is also guilty of sponsoring games that facilitate economic activity in occupied territory.
Through pressurizing recently elected president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, Israel lobbied to avoid suspension of its membership, despite the demand to have Israeli teams of Ariel (two clubs), Beitar Givat Ze'ev Shabi, Beitar Ma'ale Adumim (one of the highest populated settlements), Hapoel Oranit, and Tomer suspended. Haaretz reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu placed a call to Infantino to convey his opposition towards the proposal regarding the suspension of Israeli teams based in the settlements.
Despite the creation of the FIFA monitoring committee Israel-Palestine in 2015, no decision has been reached previously due to the continued delays.
e fear Mr. Infantino's action of today has set a precedent where governments decide the agenda for a FIFA congress, and violations of the statutes and misuse of its legal devices become so common in a way that encourages those who allow football to be used as a tool to normalize oppression," said a statement from the PFA.
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text: Soul Tyrant is back in a new version that brings new maps, accessories and sound effects. But the task remained the same, to destroy the world. Fight therefore against various fighters who want to thwart you. Also remember to collect the souls of the fallen and use them in battle.


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John Lane is a freelance consultant specializing in high-performance systems, developing application code, optimized databases, algorithms, and protocols. He can be contacted through his website at http://www.sturnus.co.uk/performance/.
Parallel threads and JDBC connection pools can be useful, but should not be used blindly. When handling numerous transactions with small overhead on heavily contended systems, batch processing often provides a better solution.
Order Management System
The case history is simple enough. The system consisted of several Java-based order management servers that held details of orders for financial instruments. The orders themselves were made up of more than 100 attributes, including product type, order size, bid and ask prices, etc., and they would frequently be updated after they were placed.
To allow for the database being unavailable, the servers had their own local persistent storage, to which they would initially save order details. Periodically, they would send new or updated order details to the database in bulk. Because the order management system was Java based, the updates were implemented as stored procedure calls via JConnect (JDBC) to a Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) database server.
The system developers decided that to maximize throughput, they would use 20 parallel threads, with a JDBC connection pool to access the database. The database server utilized three of the available single-core processors, but the system suffered from a high degree of contention and deadlocking. In fact, the system was designed with a backing-off algorithm such that the time between deadlock retries would be increased with each failure, until it eventually gave up and waited for an hour before repeating the process.
Inevitably, the order management servers would end up deadlocking with themselves over different pool connections, and thus updates would often fail 100 times. As a result, orders frequently took a considerable length of time to be persisted to the database. What went wrong? Note that while this article uses this particular system as a case study, it could equally be applied to any On-line Transaction Processing (OLTP) database application.
Query Lifecycle
Several steps occur during the life of a single database query. These will vary, depending on your particular RDBMS, but will generally include:
- Initialization of the client library (e.g. JDBC) structures
- Sending the query to the server, using a vendor-specific protocol over some communication mechanism, e.g. Tabular Data Stream (TDS) over TCP/IP
- Parsing and compilation of the query
- Executing the query
- Returning the query results to the client
If we were to construct a rough time line of the query, it would look something like that shown in Figure 2.
When a query executes on a server, it continues to run until either it has used up its allotted time slice (and is swapped out for another query), or a condition occurs that prevents it from continuing. There are many such conditions, but some of the more significant ones are as follows:
- A lock cannot be obtained because another connection is already holding it
- A page is not in the cache and must be read from disc
- A write to disk is required
At the point where one of these conditions occurs, the query will be put to sleep until the condition has been resolved. For example, if a query has been put to sleep because it was waiting for a lock, it will resume once the lock has been obtained. From the perspective of a single thread, the time spent sleeping — waiting for a lock or I/O — is "dead time." It follows that if we want the query to execute faster, we should reduce the length of time that each step takes to complete or minimize the amount of dead time.
In reality, of course, ours may not be the only query running on the server. So dead time for our query is time that the server can use to do something else, such as executing another query. Indeed, for many different execution threads, and systems as a whole, we tend to think more about overall throughput of the system rather than response time for individual queries. It would seem that the next logical step, therefore, is to make use of the multithreaded nature of servers by using multiple connections — in effect, "filling in" the dead time with other queries.
We must remember, however, that running multiple threads is only useful if there is indeed some dead time. Even with a low ratio of threads to processor cores, there can be sufficient work for the server to fill in all the available time. Further connections will only result in the queries being queued up, and the server experiencing increased contention for resources. This is important to bear in mind with systems that are heavily CPU bound, because there will be little natural dead time for other queries to make use of. This is what happened on our system: The developers of the order management system failed to take into consideration that the ratio of 20 threads to 3 processor cores was far too high on a CPU-bound database server, and it contributed to their high contention and deadlocking problems. So how can we improve throughput without introducing the overhead of contention between threads?


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4323 Irvington Road, Irvington, VA 22480, United States
4323 Irvington Road Irvington Virginia 22480 US
Fore-and-Aft is a cutting edge home decor & fashion boutique, catering to residents and visitors to Irvington, VA. We don't follow fashion trends, we help create them. Featuring creative styles from traditional designers; we bring you to the cutting edge of fashion for you & your home.
Open Monday-Saturday, beginning May 4th, 10 am to 5 pm.
4353 Irvington Road, Irvington, VA 22480, USA 0.06 mi
Interior Design & Architecture. Where structure and beauty merge.
4357 Irvington Rd, Irvington, VA 22480, USA 0.06 mi
(804) 438-6363(804) 438-6363
Dredge, located in the former Trick Dog Café building. Bryan Byrd, the owner and executive chef, is one of our local culinary heroes with strong roots to the seafood business in the area. Ir[…]
4346 Irvington Road, Irvington, Virginia, USA 0.08 mi
(804) 438-8032(804) 438-8032
The Office Bistro reopens for business March 11 IRVINGTON, VA — After a month of renovations and rebranding, The Office Bistro is ready to[…]
4395 Irvington Rd, Irvington, VA 22480 0.08 mi
(804) 438-9500(804) 438-9500
Village Needlepoint of Irvington, VA is a full service needlepoint boutique. We carry hand-painted canvases, threads, accessories, and tools. We special order, finish your treasured needlepo[…]
4372 Irvington Rd, Irvington, VA 22480 0.1 mi
(804) 438-5194(804) 438-5194
Distinctive clothing, jewelry, shoes and accessories as well as gifts and decorative elements for the home.
19 King Carter Drive, Irvington, VA, USA 0.16 mi
Fresh/curated apparel & lifestyle products, bicycle sales, rental, & service, paddle-board sales, rental, and service, long board skate sales, sandals, within a one-of-a-kind space. […]
4462 Irvington Rd, Irvington, VA 22480 0.16 mi
(804) 438-8024(804) 438-8024
What began as a gas station back in the 1950's has been transformed into a state of the art gallery representing over 200 artists from across the United States. Housing fine art, paint[…]
65 Tavern Rd, Irvington, VA 22480 0.17 mi
Covid-19 Update 6/17/2020- " For safe practices reasons, our accommodations are open on Friday and Saturday night only; and, we have only reopened our six cottages with the schoolhouse[…]
4504 Irvington Road, Irvington, VA, USA 0.18 mi
Sewlovelee features premium quality, cotton fabrics from today's top designers and manufacturers. Whether you're looking for the perfect fabric for your next quilting, crafting, or garment p[…]
77 King Carter Drive, Irvington, VA, USA 0.2 mi
A gourmet Shop, featuring craft beers, wine and provisions! This adorable shop in Irvington is directly across the street from the Hope and Glory Inn. Wednesday-Saturday 12-6 and Sunday 12-3[…]
170 White Fences Drive, Irvington, VA, USA 0.25 mi
(804) 438-9463(804) 438-9463
Why not stop to Sip (their tasting room) and Slurp (the vineyard's oyster stand) on your next visit to Irvington? The Dog and Oyster, vineyard of the Hope and Glory Inn, recently earn[…]
Irvington VA 0.25 mi
(804) 480-9723(804) 480-9723
Come see Chef Bryan Byrd and his awesome oyster tacos and soft shell crab bites! His seafood is "fresh from the water" daily from local suppliers. Try the grilled oysters on the half shell w[…]
156 King Carter Dr, Irvington, VA 22480 0.25 mi
(804) 438-6888(804) 438-6888
Visitors to the Steamboat Era Museum travel back to an age when revival camps, canneries and country stores dotted the rivers' shores. Educational programming and interactive exhibits provi[…]
4337 Irvington Rd, Irvington, VA 22480 0.27 mi
The Northern Neck's home for coffee and community, The Local serves up craft coffee by Richmond based Ironclad Roasters, complete with modern accoutrements. Additionally, you'll enjoy breakf[…]
Tides Inn, 480 King Carter Drive, Irvington, VA 22480 0.83 mi
On the Water custom power charters is just that. Your water adventure begins with Captain Gene discussing the day's options. These include touring the area as you digest back stories of love[…]
480 King Carter Dr, Irvington, VA 22480 0.84 mi
Unwind with a day at the Journey Spa at The Tides Inn. Services include a variety of body treatments, facials, waxing, manicures and more.
Tides Inn/Carter's Creek Marina: 480 King Carter Dr Irvington, VA 22480 0.84 mi
For centuries, watermen have worked the creeks and rivers of tidewater Virginia, bringing the best the Chesapeake Bay region has to offer to markets nationwide. Now, through the Watermen's H[…]
480 King Carter Drive, Irvington, VA 0.84 mi
Set on the lush peninsula with the Potomac River to the north, the Rappahannock River to the south, and historic Chesapeake Bay to the east, the Tides Inn provides a Virginia luxury resort s[…]
480 King Carter Dr, Irvington, VA 22480 0.84 mi
(844) 244-9486(844) 244-9486
Set on the lush peninsula with the Potomac River to the north, the Rappahannock River to the south, and historic Chesapeake Bay to the east, the Tides Inn provides a Virginia luxury resort s[…]
744 St Andrews Ln, Weems, VA 22576, United States 0.91 mi
COVID-19 UPDATE: Sailing is the perfect sport in this time of social distancing, Sailing your own small boat in the summer breeze with great instructors nearby to coach you. Premier Sailing […]
3443 Irvington Rd, Irvington, VA 22480, USA 0.91 mi
(804) 462-3333(804) 462-3333
Kellum Farms Produce & Seafood is a new grocery store focused on local produce including: Seafood ~ Homestead Creamery ~ NC BBQ ~ Handmade Gifts ~ Amish Goods Open everyday from 9am – 6pm.
70 Rappahannock Road, Irvington, VA 0.96 mi
The 42-foot Chesapeake Bay dead rise workboat that belongs to the Hope and Glory Inn. It is Coast Guard-certified for 25 passengers. Join our Captain Pete Cardozo and let him take you out on[…]
100 Rappahannock Rd, Irvington, VA 22480 0.99 mi
(804) 438-6650(804) 438-6650
Rappahannock River Yacht Club is located at 100 Rappahannock Road, Irvington, VA 22480 on Carter's Creek (37° 39.396′ N / 076° 26.116′ W). By boat, we are located approximately 11 mi[…]
100 Entertainment Drive, Irvington, VA 22480 1 mi
Welcome to the Northern Neck of Virginia's state-of-the-art entertainment complex featuring the area's only multi-screen luxury boutique movie theatre, plus nine exciting attractions inclu[…]
420 Christ Church Rd, Weems, VA 22576 1.28 mi
(804) 438-6855(804) 438-6855
Closed until further notice due to Covid-19. Christ Church is the best preserved of colonial Virginia's Anglican parish churches. It is the only church from colonial Virginia t[…]
347 Carter's Cove Drive, Weems, VA 22576 1.37 mi
Experience a breath-taking sunset cruise aboard Miss Nicole. There's so much to see while on the cruise: wildlife and fishing, the beautiful landscape of the Northern Neck while cruising on […]
304 Rappahannock Drive, White Stone, VA 1.62 mi
(804) 435-3796(804) 435-3796
364 Clubhouse Rd, Irvington, VA 22480 1.67 mi
(804) 438-4460(804) 438-4460
364 Clubhouse Road Irvington, VA 22480-2008 1.67 mi
Part of the Tides Inn experience, this golf course is carved out of the beautiful Virginia wooded landscape around a 50-acre lake. The Golden Eagle Golf Course features exciting elevation c[…]
850 Rappahannock Drive, White Stone, VA 22578 1.7 mi
(804) 435-6176(804) 435-6176
Established in 1982, the Sandpiper Restaurant strives to serve fine spirits and wholesome meals within a pleasant and comfortable atmosphere. Their dedicated staff and top quality, fresh, lo[…]
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text:
15 September marks the International Day of Democracy, it is both meant as a celebration of democracy and as a reminder that the need to promote and protect democracy is as urgent now as ever.
This year's International Day of Democracy coincides with the observance at UN Headquarters of the International Day of Peace, under the theme of "Peace and Democracy: Make Your Voice heard". (Event during the day are broadcast live on the UN Webcast at www.un.org/webcast.)
Democracy is a universal value based on the freely expressed will of people to determine their own political, economic, social and cultural systems and their full participation in all aspects of their lives.
The United Nations General Assembly in 2007 declared that the 15 September should be celebrated as the International Day of Democracy, stressing the continuing need to promote democratization, development and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Parliaments around the world participate in the celebrations. The date chosen for the International Day of Democracy corresponds to the adoption in September 1997 by the Inter-Parliamentary Union of a Universal Declaration on Democracy. That Declaration affirms the principles of democracy, the elements and exercise of democratic government, and the global scope of democracy.
"On this International Day of Democracy, let us redouble our efforts to support all people, in particular the young – the drivers of this year's momentous events – in making democracy a working reality. This Day belongs to them. Let us honour their commitment to a lifelong journey in democracy."
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Message for the International Day of Democracy 2011.
Information Kit
An information kit highlighting all aspects of the UN's work in the area of democracy is available in English, French and Spanish at http://www.un.org/en/events/democracyday/pdf/presskit.pdf
SG Statement and Website
Language versions of the statement from the Secretary-General. In addition to the website for the Day at http://www.un.org/en/events/democracyday, further information can be found at http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/democracy.
From the UN News Centre:
* Events in North Africa and Middle East prove democracy a universal yearning – Ban
From UNDP
* International Day of Democracy and Women's Political Empowerment
Inter-Parliamentary Union
The Brussels based United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe - UNRIC provides information on UN activities to the countries of the region. It also provides liaison with institutions of the European Union in the field of information. Its outreach activities extend to all segments of society and joint campaigns, projects and events are organized with partners including the EU, governments, the media, NGOs, schools and local authorities.
United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe (UNRIC Brussels)
Residence Palace, Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat 155, Block C2,7th and 8th floor, Brussels 1040, Belgium
Tel.: +32 2 788 8484 / Fax: 32 2 788 8485


text:
District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife Cynthia were found shot to death in their home Saturday, just two months after the county's assistant DA, Mark Hasse, was gunned down outside the courthouse. NBC's Gabe Gutierrez reports.
A Texas district attorney was shot at 20 times and his wife, Cynthia, was shot once when they were gunned down in their home on Saturday, a federal source with knowledge of the investigation told NBC News.
The source didn't say exactly how many times the man was hit. An earlier affidavit in the case said both of the victims sustained multiple gunshot wounds. The reason for the discrepancy was unclear.
The slayings of Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife have rocked the the small town of Kaufman on the eastern outskirts of Dallas.
The brazen attack on the justice official comes weeks after Colorado's prison director, Tom Clements, was shot to death at his home, with a paroled white supremacist ex-con killed in a Texas shootout the main suspect.
The deaths also came less than three months after McLelland had publicly vowed to track down the killer of Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse, who was shot dead midday Jan. 31 in the middle of Kaufman's town square.
In a search warrant affidavit, deputies told an investigator they saw cartridge casings inside the residence near the two bodies during a protective sweep of the home. Sheriff's office personnel observed multiple gunshot wounds, the statement said.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram first reported on the affidavit's contents on Tuesday; the document was also reviewed by Reuters.
The Kaufman County sheriff was expected to release an update on the case on Tuesday. A scheduled Tuesday morning news briefing was canceled, and reporters were told the next update would be done via a news release.
Law enforcement officials have been tight-lipped about the investigation into the double murder.
No connection has been revealed to the Hasse killing, in which no bullet casings were found and no suspects have been named.
County Judge Bruce Wood, however, said Monday he believes the fatal shootings of the prosecutors are related.
"This was just not some random act," he told the Star-Telegram. "It seems to me there has to be some connection."
Federal prosecutors told NBC News they are working on different theories on who might be responsible for the double slaying. One is the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a white supremacist jail gang. Dozens of its members were charged with crimes in a multiagency investigation that included McLelland's office. Other officials have played down that angle.
Other theories being investigated are drug cartels and a lone gunman with a grudge. Still, a federal source told NBC News there is no clear theory that stands out to explain the apparent assassinations, and no direct link with any groups has been reported.
Assistant District Attorney Brandi Fernandez on Monday was named to take over for McLelland and will hold the district attorney job for 21 days or until Gov. Rick Perry appoints a successor.
Meanwhile, hundreds of law enforcement professionals — including the FBI and the Texas Rangers — are working on the case.
Judges and prosecutors arrived at the county courthouse under heavy protection Tuesday morning, flanked by armed guards.
"I think everyone is sad over this," County Judge David Lewis, a friend of McLelland who attended the same church, told NBCDFW.com. When asked if there were a sense of fear, he said, "Sure. Yeah.… We're going to keep going on, and we're going to do the best we can."
Though police have so far given few answers, there was optimism at the courthouse that the crime would be solved.
"I am confident they will find whoever committed this crime," Wood said.
A public memorial service for the McLellands was scheduled for Thursday at First Baptist Church of Sunnyvale in Mesquite. The couple will be buried in Mike McLelland's hometown of Wortham.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Texas community in 'shock' over slaying of DA, wife
Phone records probed after killing of Texas prosecutor and his wife
This story was originally published on Tue Apr 2, 2013 3:05 PM EDT


text:
Not that I ever smoked, but I guess I'd start, too, if my house looked like that. But there are disasters all over the place today, from Hillary's wonderful comments on race to the innocent guy we held in Gitmo who decided that the terrorists were right about us to the Myanmar cyclone pictured. It's disaster day on Crappy Hour, as Moe takes a much-needed break and I take a moment away from Glamocracy to talk Texas, Hillary, terrorists, fascists and God with the Washington Independent's Attackerman, Spencer Ackerman.
MEGAN: So, here we are again, Crappy-ing without Moe who is on vacation because you and me are suckers, possibly. I've heard vacations are nice, though. Through the grapevine.
SPENCER: speaking of vacations, i need to put out an open call to the Jezebels who live in Austin
on Saturday 5/17 i'll be there to see the reunion show of classic 90s Chicago punk band Los Crudos
and i have nowhere to stay and no one to hang out with now that my travel partner has abandoned me for such frivolities as "finding a place to live"
so if any of you guys live in austin and can put up with a respectful houseguest for like a day, holler at sackerman-at-washingtonindependent-dot-com
ok what is in the news
MEGAN: Oh, that sucks about having nowhere to stay! I'd offer up someone but the only person I for sure know in Texas is in Dallas and it's this douchebag lobbyist I used to date and I wouldn't subject anyone to his company. And if you were a girl, he'd mack on you something awful.
SPENCER: so, HRC not dropping out despite our awesome reconciliation-filled comment thread yesterday?
MEGAN: Nope, not in the slightest. She's in it to win it, even if she cannot, mathematically speaking, win it. I am counting down the minutes until she mentions again that "pledged" delegates are not actually obligated to vote for whom they were elected to vote for...
SPENCER: this baffles me
how the press treats her candidacy like it's still viable, even as they're pointing that out
MEGAN: Well, she is a candidate. And she could win if she did manage to convince like 80% of the supers to support her and continued to get at least decent margins in the primaries. It's just unlikely to happen.
Very, very, very unlikely.
SPENCER: i was watching the detroit-orlando last night and was thinking about what would happen if sportscasters started saying things like, "orlando is up by over 20 with 30 seconds left in the fourth, but detroit could still pull it out in the unlikely event of overtime"
MEGAN: Actually, that might make it worth it to me to watch a basketball game. I fucking hate sports commentary, but if it was actually Dadaist in its absurdity...
SPENCER: ok and so not to pick on HRC, because yesterday's CH comments were a beautiful miracle, but the longer this goes on the more it makes her say things like this:
"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
so she has a much broader base to build a coalition OF WHITE PEOPLE
MEGAN: Ah, yes, the coveted Caucasian-American demographic.
SPENCER: this is her i-should-stay-in-the-race argument
MEGAN: White people like her!
SPENCER: can someone come up with an argument for why this isn't disgusting?
and should we WANT someone to?
someone needs to sit HRC down and tell her enough is enough, for her own sake
MEGAN: I mean, we're elitist. Our votes don't matter.
Obviously, since we've had 8 years of the Bush Administration.
SPENCER: at what point do New York African-Americans decide they can't support her in 2012?
SPENCER: you can't win a senate election in new york as a democrat without african americans
MEGAN: New Yorkers support plenty of bad politicians, I wouldn't hold your breath on that one.
Besides, there are lots of hard working uneducated white people upstate. I should know.
an enterprising reporter should call charlie rangel and see what he makes of that quote
MEGAN: Charlie will never answer the phone in a million, zillion years.
SPENCER: luckily i spend my days interviewing david petraeus so that ain't gonna be me
MEGAN: Whee, national security stuff!
Also, can you please explain to me what this means? Is A'jad on the outsies?
SPENCER: is it bad form to keep linking to my stuff? probably yeah. so i might as well go all-out-tacky and just quote myself:
a strong prima facie case can be made that Ajmi didn't "return" to the battlefield. The experience of being hooded and goggled and flown half a world away in the belly of a C-130; of being caged under the hot sun in the chain-link-and-wood sarcophagus of Camp X-Ray and then the panopticon of Camp Delta — and I have seen it with my own eyes; of being always at the mercy of the Quick Reaction Force and the Joint Detentions Operations Group and the interrogators; and never having a clear and open and fair path to argue for your freedom for years — that is the sort of thing that makes a man plot revenge. To deny that is to deny human nature.
I'm not saying Ajmi was an innocent. I'm not saying Guantanamo gave him a license to murder. And I'm certainly not saying that his victims deserved to die because he spent three years in Guantanamo.
What I'm saying is that a completely forseeable consequence of Guantanamo Bay is the creation of terrorists.
ewwwwwww that was like matching black with navy
MEGAN: Oh, so we're going to talk about you now? Ok.
Well, great argument for never letting them leave Gitmo, which is sort of already the plan.
SPENCER: it's not an argument for not letting them leave GTMO at all!
that's twisted megan
your love of freedom has made you hate freedom
there's this awesome thing called due process
MEGAN: In America? Ha.
SPENCER: i'm waiting to see harold and kumar detonate themselves in mosul
MEGAN: We create them here so we can justify fighting them there?
SPENCER: true fact: guy sitting next to me at DC's best coffee shop mocha hut is reading the USA Today interview with HRC and has his furrowed brow in his hands
(well, hand. That's my commitment to accuracy!)
MEGAN: My brow is furrowed but only because I feel a headache coming on.
SPENCER: i think i'm dehydrated
MEGAN: Dude, I know I'm dehydrated. I've been practicing the great art of drunkorexia again.
SPENCER: is there something else that happened? like how a cyclone killed perhaps 60,000 people in burma?
MEGAN: At least 100,000 will eventually end up being dead, actually, but the junta just let aid workers in if they promise not to fetishize freedom and access to money and food.
SPENCER: josh kurlantzick had a piece in TNR like yesterday that argued there's no way the wake of the disaster could dislodge the SLORC
but i didnt read it
MEGAN: I didn't either, but it sounds about right, but I'm a pessimist.
SPENCER: if there's an example of a natural disaster in an authoritarian country leading to significant political perestroika, i'm drawing a blank
there was that earthquake in iran in like 2003 — couple years later, ahmedinejad was elected
was there something in the caucasus around the time of all those short-lived color-revolutions or am i making that up
MEGAN: The tsunami a couple years ago didn't do anything, either, and after it the democratically elected leader of Thailand, Taksin, was ousted in a coup.
SPENCER: so clearly natural disasters are, pace orwell, objectively pro-fascist
which begs the question of God's political allegiances
MEGAN: There's a God?


text:
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© PiVi & Co 2010-2016
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iOS 10 compatibility improvements


text: Hi experts,I'm fed up with Windows 7 on my Acer eMachines E527-2537, so I did an ISO image CD installation of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. The installation program ran fine, except it was so dark, I literally had to shine a flashlight on my screen to see what I was doing. It seems that the installation was successful, except it's unusably dark. Any ideas?Thanks.


text:
New Spire MFI scanner opened by Dame Kelly Holmes
A pleasure to see Dame Kelly opening up the New MRI Scanner at Spire Sussex Hospital. Even just broken her Shoulder falling of her Bike! A Real Trouper!!
Seriously though,we are very lucky to have this new scanner in Hastings, so that a fast scan can be obtained at a very fair price. Go to www.spiresussex.com for more details.


text:
Some Republicans Support Immigration Reform Now
Some Republicans Support Immigration Reform Now
By Sophia Toreen
Some Republicans support immigration reform now, at least those in Illinois, and they are taking the moral high ground on the issue, unlike many of their fellow Republicans in the U.S. House of Congress.
Some of Illinois' highest-profile Republicans voiced support Tuesday for an immigration overhaul that's stalled in the U.S. House as a "morally right" and business-minded decision, an election-year move they hoped would help break the stalemate.
The unusual gathering – even for a state that has some of the nation's most immigrant-friendly laws – featured former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, former Gov. Jim Edgar, Republican state House and Senate leaders, and several candidates, including state Sen. Jim Oberweis, a U.S. Senate hopeful who has made divisive statements in the past about immigrants.
Organizers said the GOP support, echoed in similar gatherings nationwide, indicated there's been movement and Illinois could help bring legislation lead to a vote soon. Half of the state's six Republican congressmen support Tuesday's efforts. However, some political experts and members of Illinois' active immigrant rights groups said the event was more of an attempt to win over immigrant and minority voters ahead of some likely tight elections this year.
The message among Republicans at Tuesday's event – which included business executives and Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner – was pushing forward with comprehensive plans that address all immigrants. Most said they'd support pending legislation that tightens border security and outlines a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the U.S illegally.
Evidence that some Republicans support immigration reform now was expressed by former U.S. Speaker of the House, Hastert. "There's a lot of folks that came here that aren't under documentation and they need to be a part of this nation," Hastert said. "We need to be able to give them legitimacy."
A shift was clearest with Oberweis, who is challenging U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat who helped craft the legislation. In 2004, Oberweis released a campaign commercial in which he flew over Soldier Field warning that enough "illegal aliens" were entering the country daily to fill its seats.
"It was poorly done," Oberweis told reporters. "Certainly, 10 years ago I was very naive and not knowledgeable about politics and I made some mistakes. Hopefully I can correct those mistakes and go forward and I'll be a better candidate than I was 10 years ago."
He and other Republicans said they didn't back all parts of the legislation, but organizers said their support would still help.
"It shows just far how debate this has moved," said Joshua Hoyt, director of the National Partnership for New Americans. "There's an acceptance by Republicans in Illinois that immigration reform will help the economy. That there is a moral urgency. That it is political suicide to stay on the wrong side of issue."
Recent statistics for how many of Illinois' registered voters are immigrants were unavailable, but the number hovered around 10 percent, according to an analysis of 2008 U.S. Census data by Chicago demographer Rob Paral. He said the figure is higher now as immigrants have propped up population growth across the state. The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights registered more than 150,000 voters – including naturalized citizens and children of immigrants – in the past decade.
The issue has cropped up in the governor's race. Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn has generally enjoyed support from immigrant and minority voters, with many citing his attention to workers' issues and supporting drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants. Rauner's campaign has also reached out to immigrant and Latino voters, releasing a Spanish-language ad, among other things.
Rauner hasn't detailed his platform on immigration. He said Tuesday he supports a pathway to citizenship, but didn't explain. He said he hasn't studied the bill in the House.
Quinn's campaign criticized Rauner for "pretending" to endorse immigration reform and accused him of supporting "anti-immigration" causes with political donations. Rauner dismissed that, saying he's given to many candidates, none of which he agrees with fully.
Still, political experts say that taking on immigration reform is a smart move for Republicans, who've vowed to better appeal to women, minority and immigrant voters.
President Barack Obama, who campaigned on a promise to reform immigration laws, has been criticized for not following through and for the high number of deportations under his administration. And former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's recent comments about illegal immigration as an "act of love" by people trying to provide for their families has resonated in some immigrant and Latino circles.
"This is a vulnerability on the part of the Democrats," said María de los Angeles Torres, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
However, longtime advocates were skeptical. Tuesday's event, hosted by the Illinois Business Immigration Coalition, featured attendees in business attire at the usually members-only Chicago Club- a contrast to massive immigrant rights rallies through Chicago streets.
"It's a big electoral game," said Jorge Mujica, who helps organize the marches. "Talk and talk and talk and let's see who comes up ahead in the election. This is not about the people."
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.
Feature Photo Credit: cbsnews.com


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Journal Article
© Mar 2011 Volume 9 Issue 1, ECKM Special Issue, Editor: Eduardo Tome, pp1 - 84
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Inter generational learning is an open process people of all ages can learn from each other in a stimulating context. It is a complex process of knowledge sharing that overcomes age and cultural barriers. Inter‑generational learning is more specific for those organizations where people group together in age layers or strata. Universities are such kind of layered or nested organizations. The purpose of this paper is to present some results of our research in the field of inter‑generational learning and knowledge sharing in universities. This topic is important because a university is by its own nature a nested knowledge organization, due to a continuous flow of students and the bottom‑up regeneration of the faculty staff. Knowledge creation and knowledge loss are intertwined processes, and both of them are strongly influenced by the age scale. A university is a multilayered knowledge organization, where the inner most layers are represented by older professors who concentrate the fundamental structures of knowledge, and the outer layers are represented by students in their different learning cycles. In this paper we are interested in assessing the choices done by the academic staff, in the context of the determinant criterions and trade‑offs in inter‑generational learning. This had been done in the framework of Analytic Hierarchic Processes (AHP). We thought that this is a proper tool since it mainly belongs to the field of decision‑making with the possibility to determine vectors of priorities for the individuals participating in the decisions under study.
Keywords: learning dynamics, university, knowledge sharing, knowledge creation, analytic hierarchy process
Journal Article
© Sep 2011 Volume 9 Issue 3, ECIC 2011, Editor: Geoff Turner and Clemente Minonne, pp181 - 295
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: Modelling Organizational Knowledge Dynamics (OKD) is important in developing knowledge strategies within the framework of strategic management. We present in this paper a new perspective on modelling OKD based on the dynamic equilibrium equation of the organizational knowledge, and on using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The dynamic equilibrium equation is considered for a time interval ∆T, and contains the following terms: the level of total organizational knowledge variation ∆K, the knowledge creation variation ∆C, the knowledge acquisition variation ∆A, and the knowledge loss variation ∆L. Since each of these terms has a different relative importance in the organizational knowledge balance, it is necessary to find a way of evaluating their weighting factors. For this purpose we use the AHP mathematical model developed by Saaty for the managerial decision making. AHP requires a structuring of the field of knowledge, and we considered a structure composed of three levels: (1) the goal level – increasing the level of organizational knowledge; (2) the strategies level – the strategy for increasing knowledge creation (S1), the strategy for increasing acquisition of new knowledge (S2), and the strategy for reducing knowledge loss (S3); (3) the activities level – hiring new valuable human resources (A1), developing training programs (A2), creating a performing motivation of employees (A3), and purchasing books, journals, software programs, and other information materials (A4). This structured model of AHP has been applied as an empirical research within a large company. We sent questionnaire to a number of 500 employees, and received valid answers from 173 respondents. The AHP method is based on paired comparisons of strategies with respect to the goal of increasing the level organizational knowledge, and then on paired comparisons of activities with respect to each strategy we defined. These paired comparisons yield matrices that lead to systems of eigenvalue equations whose solutions compose the vector of priorities for strategies, and for activities with respect to each strategy. Values of the vector of priorities for strategies are the weighting factors for the equilibrium equation components.
Keywords: analytic hierarchy process, knowledge acquisition, knowledge creation, knowledge dynamics, knowledge loss


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About 1000 families live in the Metro Toronto area and environs.
Sindhi Cultural Association of Toronto:
President : Ramesh Shahani.
Pogramming: Deepka Bharwani.
V-P : Gulab Butany
Secretary:Indrani Butani- Desouza
Treasurer: Reema Sakhrani.
(Sindhi Gurumandir Temple Est 1996):
Board of Trustees:
Sher Motwani.
Sher Motwani a Professional Engineer and President of A Manufacturing Company. Married for past 35 years, father of two daughters and has a 2 year old grandson. Sher's wife Meena is actively involved in all the activities of the Sindhi Community. Sher has been the Chairman of Gurmandir Board for past 6 years and has involved with the Sindhi Association for 10 years. Under his leadership, Toronto Sindhis organized a very successful Sindhi Sammelan in 1997, which was attended by more than 1000 Sindhi Delegates From around the world.
Jagtiani Suresh.
Suresh Jagtiani is an Engineer, originally from New Delhi, lived in the Middle-east for 24 years before moving to Canada in Aug 2000. Self-Employed, runs an accredited Career College Key2Careers in Toronto & an Oil/Gas Equipment Export Company. . Has two sons Rahul at Univ. Of Waterloo & Rohit. His wife Neelu also self-employed runs Business World (Career Development/Coaching) at Port Credit, Mississauga. Since coming to Canada, has been actively involved with the Sindhi Community.
Dr. Jagdish Butany:
Dr Jagdish Butany (MBBS, MS, FRCPC), is a Professor,Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto Medical School and a Staff Pathologist at Toronto General Hospital.Jagdish,has a major interest in Heart Disease. Jagdish's wife, Dr Vidya Butany, is a practising Psychiatrist and Assistant Professor, at the University of Toronto.
Dayal Mirchandani:
Businessman since last 30 years. Settled in Canada since 1985. Deals in Real Estate Investments in Toronto. Actively involved within the Sindhi Community and is proud to be associated with the Sindhi Gurmandir in Toronto, which has come up with the hardship & dedication on some of the members.
Lachman Daryanani
Pauline Lala:
Pauline plays the core role of putting the best tem together for new ventures, business development, project management, sales and marketing. Her valuable connections, top negotiation and business skills in all the related fields of real estate make her deals successful.
Arjun Jasuja:
Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Sigma Systems, Mr. Jasuja is responsible for the overall strategy and direction of the company.His extensive experience in Information Technology enables the company to deliver world-class software solutions to tier-1 companies in the Cable and Wireless industries.
Prior to founding Sigma, Mr. Jasuja was involved in creating leading-edge software solutions for the Banking/Telecom industries.Andy Jasuja began his career in Information Technology in 1975 at Tata Consultancy Services, Bombay, India. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Electronics Engineering from The Institute of Technology, Varanasi, India and a Masters degree in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo.
Balani Lakhi.
Ambwani Jacky:
Jacky Ambwani has been actively involved within the Sindhi community and serving as the Legal Advisor for Gurmandir. He looks after all the Legal Issues for Gurmandir.
Krishan Vasdani:
Krishan Vasdani has been living in Canada since 1974. For the past twelve years, he has been actively involved within the Sindhi community, serving as membership director on the SCAT board for 4 years and treasurer on the GurMandir board for 3. In that same time period, he has been working for Clarica/Sunlife. Married to Rekha for the past 22 years, with three beautiful daughters- Nadiya, Tara & Jyoti, Krishan is a hard-working father that never quits. Dedicated to making GurMandir successful in its path, Krishan will continue to provide his best.
Sonia Wadhwani:
Sonia was one of the founding members of the Sindhi Cultural Association in Toronto. She has a Masters degree in Philosophy and works in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. She loves to sing. She is married to Satu Wadhwani and they have three beautiful children – Zenia, Jai and Lata. Both husband and wife along with their daughters have been heavily involved in the activities of Sindhi Association since its inception and are always ready to lend a helping hand. Sonia has been on GurMandir Board for the last two terms and loves to be involved in all GurMandir activities.
Chandra Shivdasani:
Immigrated with Chattur Shivdasani, and three children, to Canada from Allahabad, India in 1969 (since widowed after a blessed marriage).
Mother to three grown children, Dr. Kumar, Kamal (married to Marilyn Geer), and Jyoti (married to John Homer) and grandmother to two adorable grandchildren, Patrick and Jessica.
Retired Ontario civil servant and former broadcaster – All India Radio: Delhi, Bombay, Allahabad (1957-1969) besides working as senior secretary in prestigious companies – and CHIN and CJMR (1971-1997) radio stations in Toronto.
Founder Board member of Sindhi Cultural Association of Toronto (1990-92).
Hobbies: music, cooking and knitting.
Nita Masand:
Nita Massand has been living in Canada since 2008. For the past 27 years, she lived in Dubai and actively contributed to the community as a committee member of the India Club handling events. In her career for 25 years, she has worked as Operations Manager & Business Manager for Amex/Emirates Bank. She currently is a Mortgage Development Manager for National Bank of Canada. Married to Suresh for the past 28 years, with three lovely children – Rajeev, Rahul (sons) and Priyanka (daughter-in-law) she is very hard-working. Dedicated to making GurMandir successful in every way, Nita will continue to provide her full contribution
Kamlesh Moorjani:
Kamlesh Moorjani born in Sindh in 1944, completed his engineering education in Ahmedabad. He won many Gold medals, secured first class first in University and also Gold for securing first position in Sindhi Language in Gujarat State. After working as an engineer in Kandla Port Trust for 12 years, Kamlesh moved to Dubai, UAE, as Chief engineer of a major construction co. After doing his MBA (Hons) from Washington DC in 1990, he settled down in Toronto, Canada, where he worked on many projects with Ministry of Economic Development and Trade in addition to managing his own business. He has always been very active in Social activities. He was to managing his own business. He has always been very active in Social activities.
He was President of Sindhi cultural Association of Toronto,
President of Sadhu Vaswani Center, Toronto,
Director of Toronto Sindhi Gur Mandir Board and
Vice-President of Alliance of Sindhi Associations of America, inc.
Currently, he is Vice-President of International Sindhu Chamber of Commerce.
He is recipient of 'Millennium Life Time Achievement Award' instituted by the Federations of Worldwide Sindhi Panchayats in year 2001.


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Much like thebookplace.org, the community of Boyd County continues to change and evolve.
Located on the edge of the Ohio River in northeastern Kentucky, Boyd County has long had ties to steel, oil, coal and other industries dependent on the river and rail systems running through it. But as times change, so does the region and the people living in it.
The Country Music Highway connects Boyd County to its neighbors north and south, and the area proudly displays that heritage in its museums, stores and public venues. The region boasts an abundance of outdoor recreation options, plenty of local festivals and top-notch education and health care systems.
You can find out about all those things and more using the links in this section. Contact your elected officials. See what's happening this weekend. Get the phone number for a local radio station. Whatever you need, it all starts here, at yourbookplace.


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In 1995, Lamar Alexander, then a former Governor and cabinet secretary preparing a run for the presidency, and Chester Finn, then a Hudson Institute Senior Fellow, published The New Promise of American Life (Hudson Institute Press). The critically acclaimed volume examined how the expansion of the federal government—which began during the Progressive Era and continued through World War II and Vietnam—might be reversed through a devolution of power to states, localities, and civil society; and through a renewed culture of voluntarism and entrepreneurship.
Fifteen years later, as the 112th Congress prepares to take office, Hudson Institute hosted a conference to re-examine the themes of The New Promise of American Life, to examine why this vision got derailed post-1995, and how it is even more urgent post-2010. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), now the Chair of the Senate Republican Conference, keynoted the event and offer his candid reflections on "Less from Washington, More of Ourselves."


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Plymouth, New Hampshire
|This article is a stub. Help us to expand it by contributing your knowledge. For county and town page guidelines, visit U.S. County Page Content Suggestions.
Plymouth is a town in Grafton county, New Hampshire. It was formed in 1763 and has gone by the following other name/s: New Plymouth. For more information, contact the county at 6 Post Office Sq., Plymouth 03264. On the attached map, Plymouth is shown as 29 in Grafton.
For information about the state of New Hampshire see New Hampshire Family History Research.


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A few weeks ago a reader shared with me that he thinks he is a victim of witchcraft done by his ex – wife. Not really an expert in identifying witchcraft or sorcery and so I dismissed it and told him that it is not my expertise but will just ask my Guru Lama about it. Honestly, at that time I honestly thought that it was just a mild hallucination and desire to blame somebody else for what is happening. GP if you get to read this, I'm sorry for thinking that way. But really there are a lot of people who thinks that they are being a victim of witchcraft or sorcery but a lot of times it really just is their own bad karma or bad Feng Shui.
However, I went to ask my Guru Lama about GP and true enough according to my Guru Lama GP is a victim of witchcraft done thru a medium (a witch or somebody who is familiar with it) by his ex – wife.
My Guru Lama, sort of reminded me what I should know already by this time. That is WITCHCRAFT or SORCERY is not really how it is portrayed on TV or movies, wherein the witch is an ugly girl with a sharp nose, messy hair, with a cauldron and a voodoo doll. Although it is possible that some of them uses a voodoo doll. My Guru Lama also said that witchcraft or sorcery is more common that we think. To stress the lesson to me and to remind me not to be judgmental my Guru Lama reminded of some of the cases that I encountered that involves witchcraft or sorcery. Although some of these we didn't really call witchcraft but if you analyze it, it is really witchcraft.
Allow me to share some the cases here on this article.
One of the cases involves DAS. For the purpose of this article let's call her Diane. Diane was married to a Chinese guy who seems to be totally controlled by his mother, Diane's mother – in – law. To make the long story short, Diane's husband, let's just call him ES, got a gift from his mother. The gift is a faux diamond set in silver. Aside from ES, his father, Diane's father – in – law, also got one. Now the question here is, why were the other children and Diane and the grandchildren were not given the same pendant by the mother – in – law given that the reason given by the mother – in – law is that it is for protection. She is also very well capable giving all of them the same pendant because (1) it doesn't look very expensive, and (2) the mother – in – law is really reach that she can afford to give one to all the members of the family even if it cause (exaggeration) around one hundred thousand Philippine peso each. However, Diane noticed that since having the pendant, her husband and father – in – law seems to always bow to the will of her mother – in – law, who totally dislike having another independent, self – reliant woman In their house like Diane. ES and his father have also a lot of times grown to rely on Diane, something that her mother – in – law detests. My Guru Lama and my Feng Shui teacher and a Taoist Priest in Hong Kong confirmed that the pendant given by Diane's mother – in – law to ES and to her father – in – law is a way or means to control them. A lot of people can argue that this can be just a product of an over imaginative mind. That's possible. But explain why when the ES stops wearing the pendant, he stopped being his mother's pawn.
Another story is that of a married wife. BY is a happily married wife until he found out that her husband had an affair with two different women. When he was found out, the husband professed his love for BY and his family and promised that he will stop seeing his mistresses. They didn't have any problem with the first mistress, but the second mistress is out to get him back. And so there are times that the husband seems to be not himself. He will all of a sudden feel anxious and feel as if the girl is calling him. There are times that he will just stare into space and seems to be somewhere else. It was later on confirmed by my Guru Lama and another psychic consulted by BY that this second mistress has an employed the services of a witch to help bring back BY's husband to her.
There is yet another story of another reader whose son is madly fell in love with a older woman of what can be considered is of an ill repute. The woman works as a hospitality girl; she is a kept woman of a politician. When the mother of the guy found out about the relationship, she set out to break them apart. The son came to his senses and went back to his mom's loving arms. That's when the problem and change in his son started. According to the mom, his son started staring into space; there are times that he seems to be awake without any 'spirit' inside him. Still there are times that the son would act like the woman is the most important thing or most important person in his life. Still there re times that he will sleepwalk, something that he never did before he got involved with the said woman, he will walk out of his house. But whenever he will come to his senses, he will go back to his mom's house. However, there are times, that he himself doesn't understand why it seems that he is unable to control himself and stop thinking about the woman. His mom brought him to see a psychiatrist, thinking that he might be depress because of the break – up. He end up seeing two different psychiatrist who saw him several times, when he was in control of his senses. They concluded that there is nothing wrong with him and that he knows that the woman is no good for him. However, still all of a sudden he would look for the woman and act strange. Until one day, he sleep walked going to the house of the woman. When his brother found out that he was not in bed, he called his mom and dad, and his mom knew that he must have gone to the house of the woman. They followed their instinct and went to see the woman. They were met by the woman's mother who told them to leave. They refuse and asked the barangay officials to help and intercede, but since their son is already 20 years old, technically speaking he is an adult and if it was his free will to be there they cannot do anything. Still they insist to see his son. The woman then came out to talk to them to assure them that their son is speaking soundly and wanted to be with her. The mom refuses to give up on his son, and so she and her husband continued to argue and insist on seeing the son. All of a sudden, their son came running out crying and said he doesn't understand why he went to the house of the woman. He went home with them. It was then that the mother thought that it maybe witchcraft. This was confirmed by an albularyo (Filipino Shaman) who tried to break the power of the witchcraft, but the sleep walking, the depressed moods, the staring into space moments continue to happen until the mom having read my blog contacted me. I in turn contacted my Guru Lama who also confirmed that it is witchcraft.
Still, there is another story of another reader whose child kept on getting sick, really sick that she has to drop out of school. This was a big blow to her because this happened right after when her problem with her husband just got solved. You see her husband fell in love with another woman, a very rich woman, but even before she found out about it her husband ended the affair with the other woman, she found out about it because he admitted the affair to her. This created a temporary friction between the two of them because she cannot fathom the fact the he betrayed her love and trust, plus it doesn't help that the other woman seems bent on destroying their relationship and still pursues the guy. In the end their love won and they patch things up. This was when their only child started getting sick. They initially unable to find out the disease, but it was later found out that their child was suffering from leukemia. They sought the help of some of the best doctors in UST Hospital, but the child seems to be getting worse and is not responding to chemotherapy as well as the doctors expect. They were told by a friend who is supposed to be psychic that there is witchcraft involved. This was when they contacted me, and I in turn contacted my Guru Lama who confirmed that indeed witchcraft is involved. By this time, they have forgotten about the other woman, but my Guru Lama is the one who brought it up and said the other woman wants them to run into a big problem and run into financial problem, to come to a point where in the husband will go back to her and ask for financial help. Remember the other woman is really rich.
These are just some of the stories that my Guru Lama reminded me. And yes, I realized that Witchcraft or Sorcery is more common that we thought it is. It is more accessible that we thought of. We should take away our stereotypes against witchcraft or sorcery but we should also realize that it is more common that we realize.
And so going back to GP. He is indeed suffering from witchcraft. To make things worst, his second wife, and daughter from his second wife are getting affected also. GP himself started getting ill and was diagnosed with a heart ailment. My Guru Lama confirmed he is being attacked through witchcraft by his ex – wife. The ex – wife seems to have contacted a relative who is familiar with it. She is doing this simply because she wants GP and his family to suffer to the point that GP go back to her begging for forgiveness. GP's case is work in progress; my Guru Lama is helping break the witchcraft done on him. Let's all pray it works.
Diane's case is also still a work in progress. I lost touch with BY so don't know what really happened. But the son who fell in love with the woman of ill repute is now totally sane and has gotten rid of the power of the witchcraft over him. He is now working and earning a good sum of money every month. After a series of chemotherapy who at the beginning she was found not to respond well on the said medicines, the child who suffered from witchcraft because of her father's other woman is now doing well and is back in school. The cure recommended by my Guru Lama varies, but usually involves powerful amulets.
But looking back at the stories, you will see the witchcraft involves people who have some relationships with the one who propagated the witchcraft. Why? This is because witchcraft or sorcery is more effective if there is an emotional or even binding relationship between the one who propagates it and the victim. By binding relationship I refer to either marriage or parent and child. A strong emotion is also a powerful conduit, so love and extreme anger are strong conduit. In the case of the child who had leukemia, she was not involve, but either the love or anger of the other woman to her dad is the conduit, and in turn that conduit is extended through the love of his dad for her.
You will notice also that most of the witchcraft involves a woman. It's not because they are more evil but it is because a woman's emotions is naturally stronger than that of a man, and emotion acts a conduit to make the witchcraft more powerful. Having said that it doesn't mean that a man cannot be a conduit for witchcraft to be effective.
You can read the other posts on this series:
- Witchcraft: It Is Not What You Think It Is But It Is More Common Than We Think It Is (Part 1)
- Witchcraft: It Is Not What You Think It Is But It Is More Common Than We Think It Is (Part 2)
- Witchcraft: It Is Not What You Think It Is But It Is More Common Than We Think It Is (Part 3)
- Five Ways to Protect Yourself From Evil Eye and/or Witchcraft.
For questions, comments, and suggestions please email email@example.com